Hospital at Home (HaH) is a sustainable, innovative and next-generation health care model. From the physician’s perspective, it offers person-centered medical care and keeps patients out of the hospital, away from possible complications and on to better outcomes. However, there are still plenty of challenges for providers to work through.

“People love to have inpatient or acute level care in the comfort of their own home,” Dr. Adam Groff, co-founder of Maribel Health, told Home Health Care News. “The data suggests that for populations studied in multiple areas, [HaH] is a safe service with high-quality care, low readmission rates, low escalation rates, low infection rates and, bottom line, patients love it.”

Maribel Health, based in Hanover, New Hampshire, designs, builds and operates advanced clinical care models in the home and community to expand health system capacity and improve patient access.

While it seems like a win for patients and caregivers, the model has seen growing pains.

“One challenge is clarifying the distinction between HaH care and other in-home health care services like home health or skilled nursing facility (SNF) care,” Heather O’Sullivan, president of Mass General Brigham Home Hospital, told HHCN. 

Based in Boston, Mass General Brigham Home Hospital provides comprehensive home-based care, including chronic, urgent and acute care, directly to patients in their homes.

The structure and implementation of HaH care vary depending on the hospital’s needs, capacity and patient population. Some organizations run the program out of the emergency department and admit eligible patients to their homes. In contrast, others rely on community paramedics or specialty clinics to refer patients to the program.

“While the use of paramedics in health care is not new, the pandemic accelerated the scaling of this workforce to support home-based acute care,” O’Sullivan said. “By incorporating paramedics into the HaH model, we address workforce shortages while enabling health care professionals to practice at the full scope of their licensure. This expansion not only meets the complex needs of our patients, but also ensures that we are using our workforce to its optimal potential.”

The HaH model was introduced at Johns Hopkins in 1995 and was used to manage and treat older patients who refused hospital stays or were at higher risk of hospital-acquired infections.

Early trials of the model found the total cost of at-home care was 32% less than traditional hospital care, the length of stay was one-third shorter and the incidence of complications was dramatically lower.

“HaH can reduce hospital overcrowding and provide care that aligns with patient preferences,” O’Sullivan said. “As health care systems increasingly focus on strategic sustainability amidst a rapidly evolving health care ecosystem, scaling HaH presents a unique opportunity to meet growing patient demand while improving clinical outcomes and satisfaction.”

Though the structure of these programs varies, many commonalities exist. They are well-suited for medium-acuity patients needing hospital-level care, but stable enough for safe monitoring from their homes. They are also suitable for patients with conditions requiring defined treatment protocols, such as pneumonia, congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or diabetes.

“One of the greatest advantages of this model is that it allows clinicians to enter patient’s homes, offering insights into social and environmental factors that may impact health – insights often missed in a traditional hospital setting,” O’Sullivan said. “This holistic view enables more tailored care.”

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) launched the Acute Hospital Care at Home waiver during the pandemic, which created a payment system for HaH through Medicare. Now, the model is popular enough that providers are operating within that waiver – which has been extended to the end of 2024 – but also outside of it.

Launching a program

Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, North Carolina, began enrolling patients in its HaH program in March. The program is in its early stages and is growing.

“To date, the Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center (NH NHRMC) program has cared for approximately 70 acute patients in their home,” Christy Spivey, senior director of nursing, told HHCN. “Patient experience has been overwhelmingly positive, reaching satisfaction scores of 100%.”

According to Spivey, there have been no unexpected returns to the hospital, and readmission rates are either within or better than those of similar hospitalized patients. Based on the number of patients served at home, NH NHRMC has saved almost 300 in-hospital physical bed days, creating the capacity to keep higher acuity patients in those beds.

“Our health care providers have found great satisfaction in meeting the patient’s needs creatively, allowing the patient to heal in their home environment,” Spivey said. “Often, they find that providing health education is better received by the patient when they are at home. They can also include family members in the plan of care and education, which supports the patients. And the ease of access to the patient via technology makes it easy to see patients from wherever the provider is located.”

Spivey went on to say that patients benefit for many of the same reasons.

“First, they can heal in the comfort of their home, with loved ones, and even pets,” she explained. “They can easily reach a [nurse] or physician by touching a button on a screen if they have a question. Specially trained community paramedics and a physical therapist come to their homes to administer care and therapies, where the approach is tailored to their unique needs.”

Core tenets of the Novant Health program support optimal nighttime sleep, medically ordered meals, and optimized mobility, all tailored to the patient’s unique needs. Pharmacists, case managers, and other care team members can also visit the patient virtually to teach and support the patient’s care plan.

According to Spivey, nationally reported outcomes consistently show patients in these programs have higher satisfaction and lower readmission rates than similar patients who receive care inside the hospital.

Overcoming challenges

To be eligible for the Acute Hospital Care at Home program, patients must meet clinical and social criteria established by CMS. The program has 78 approved diagnoses, including pneumonia, COPD and urinary tract infections.

On Sept. 18, the U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee approved a bill extending necessary flexibilities to benefit telehealth and hospital-at-home providers.

The Telehealth Modernization Act of 2024 would grant two-year extensions to various telehealth flexibilities implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. These include continued payment for virtually furnished care services, eliminating in-person or geographic requirements for telehealth providers and supporting audio-only telehealth. These flexibilities are set to expire at the end of this year.

The act would also extend the hospital-at-home waiver by an additional five years. Again, for now, the waiver program is expected to expire at year end.

While the HaH model offers numerous benefits, it also comes with challenges. Significant barriers and limitations exist, including payment reimbursement issues, physician and patient resistance, patient safety concerns and implementation hurdles.

“The single biggest challenge is the looming end of the CMS Hospital Care at Home waiver,” Dr. Stephen Dorner, chief clinical and innovation officer for Mass General Brigham Healthcare at Home, told HHCN. “We need congressional action to extend the waiver and maintain federal support for this incredible care delivery model.”

Regarding challenges to care delivery itself, Dorner said that all health care providers are working to overcome them.

“The first is culture change,” he said. “This is not how people are used to providing or receiving acute hospital-level care, and it takes a lot of time and effort to educate and facilitate buy-in. Then, once people understand the phenomenal quality benefits associated with HaH care and agree to undertake it, the logistical challenges of delivering that care take hold. Orchestrating the complexities of home-based acute care delivery – staff, supplies, patients, equipment, medications, food – can be daunting. Finally, there is a burgeoning market for solutions to these challenges that is waiting on certainty from federal regulators that the waiver will remain in place before activating.”

Most private payers do not cover hospital-level care in the home. Hospitals have had some success with Medicare Advantage (MA) plans and Veteran Affairs (VA), but health systems with insurance plans have a similar opportunity to cover HaH care.

“It’s important for providers to write and call their senators and representatives to let them know they want their support for the continuation of the Acute Hospital Care at Home Waiver,” Dorner said. “When you look at the traditional health care landscape, the growing demand for access, and the ever-longer wait times for care, it’s clear that the status quo is unsustainable. We need new solutions to deliver better care, and HaH is our greatest promise to realize a better future in care delivery.”

The benefits of HaH for patients

Nancy Foster, vice president for quality and patient safety at the American Hospital Association (AHA), told HHCN that she believes people would be surprised at the costs of HaH programs, and the overall benefits.

“We’ve looked at various studies,” she said. “They are comparable to the brick-and-mortar hospital, partly because we use staff time differently. We have staff traveling to the patient and so forth. We need technologies that you might not have to use in the hospital, but that assist with bi-directional communication. So, there are different costs, but the totals are similar.”

Dr. Ronald Paulus, co-founder of Maribel Health, agreed and provided more background.

“The literature is pretty clear that when your emergency department is congested, there’s significant harm that accrues to patients, including excess mortality,” Paulus told HHCN. “So, anything that improves the throughput of my emergency department and inpatient floors is a good thing from a safety perspective. But it is also good from an economic perspective. If you look at how HaH has been studied, it’s been shown to reduce direct costs by just under 40%. It’s at least 20 times more capital efficient, and when the program is run effectively, it can generate double digit EBIDTA margins.”

Standing up a HaH program requires logistical and technical work, which requires time, staff and budget. Some hospitals have partnered with companies that can provide the technology, manage logistics or provide care coordination to facilitate the implementation of a HaH program.

According to O’Sullivan, to support the growth of this model, organizations must continue to focus on expanding the health care workforce and address gaps in education.

“This includes initiatives like industry and academic partnerships to create new career opportunities for students and the innovative use of a broad professional team in the home hospital model,” she said. “We are working closely with educational institutions to address gaps in standardized curricula, ensuring that the future health care workforce is well-prepared to meet the new and undefined demands of this growing model.”

Before the pandemic, there was skepticism that the quality of care provided at home would be as good as in the hospital. This could be changing. As patients are reluctant to go to the hospital and telehealth capacity is growing, HaH care is becoming a more desirable option for providers and patients.

“Growth can be achieved by demonstrating the success of HaH models, advocating for legislative support and continuing to innovate in care delivery,” O’Sullivan said. “At Mass General Brigham, we’ve reached 70 beds in our Home Hospital program. Our pilot program has evolved into a core service, delivering high-quality, patient-centered care at home. Research has consistently shown that patients and caregivers prefer this model due to its proven outcomes and an overall positive experience for all involved.”

Spivey said that overcoming barriers and limitations is an ongoing internal and external process, and that growth depends on the customer’s voice.

“As more people hear about the program, they ask their physicians if they can be included, which will provide more momentum,” she said. “We provide internal education and presentations to physicians, nurses and other team members. Case managers have worked to integrate screening processes into daily patient rounds. Screening protocols for the team have been honed to support more rapid identification of patients, including optimizing the electronic medical record to create patient lists based on inclusion criteria. Also, including family in the initial discussion about the program is critical. If the patient or family is uncomfortable with care in the home, they can decline participation. For those who consent to participate, it is clear that if they become uncomfortable while receiving care in the home, the team will work with them to address the issue or bring the patient back to the hospital, if necessary.”

Dorner said the most significant opportunities for HaH are better patient care, job satisfaction and value.

“We know that the quality of HaH exceeds traditional brick-and-mortar hospital care for the patients who can safely receive care at home,” he said. “We also know that clinicians who join HaH, either as part of a diversified traditional clinical portfolio or as their full-time job, report increased job satisfaction. Some of these clinicians, who otherwise would have left health care at the end of the pandemic, have found the clinical care of HaH to provide more fulfilling, deeper connections to patients, which is why many of us joined health care in the first place. All in all, there’s better value associated with HaH care, and delivering greater value at a greater scale presents a spectacular opportunity for health care across the United States.”

According to O’Sullivan, there is immense potential for health care system transformation using the HaH model.

“HaH can reduce hospital overcrowding and provide care that aligns with patient preferences. As health care systems increasingly focus on strategic sustainability amidst a rapidly evolving health care ecosystem, scaling HaH presents a unique opportunity to meet growing patient demand while improving clinical outcomes and satisfaction,” she said.

Dorner added that there’s a clear upside to investing in the growth of this care delivery model, given the long-term regulatory and financial certainty that will increase patient awareness of the HaH model’s benefits, as well as the hospital’s willingness to break out of the mold and do something innovative.

“Increasingly, we will see improvements to equipment becoming more modular, portable and interconnected,” he said. “We’ll see software solutions to care orchestration to make moving equipment and services across a broader geography seamless. Eventually, this will be the primary method of caring for many conditions that require hospitalization today, and society will greatly benefit from it.”

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Helper Bees, based in Austin, Texas, is the developer of an aging-in-place platform that connects families with services in and around their homes. The company’s technology provides the infrastructure for payers to access, deploy and scale services. It has partnerships with most insurance carriers and health plans nationwide.

The helpful card works like a prepaid debit card. Payers can load money onto the card for eligible products and services. The card has distinct digital wallets for different purposes, such as buying OTC products, paying for in-home services, making retail purchases, covering health care costs, paying for utilities and covering gym memberships. This ensures that members have a smooth and complete experience.

“Historically, flex cards have been good for products, not services,” The Helper Bees COO Andy Friedell told Home Health Care News. “That is because services typically must be delivered through a credentialed network. Because of Helper Bees, our whole business model is built around a credentialed network of non-medical SDoH service providers. We are in this unique position where we can offer a card with both a retail network and a credentialed network of non-medical SDoH service providers.”

Friedell provided an example of a member who might use a flex card to purchase a grab bar for their bathroom. However, if they are a senior citizen and have it mailed to them, it is useless unless they have someone to install it.

“In our world, you can now, with the helpful card, buy a grab bar and have a credentialed, vetted handy person install it in your bathroom,” Friedell said. “You can access a grocery benefit and also get a ride to the store. It’s really a way to mix and match products and services.”

helpful stands out from traditional flexible spending cards due to its unique ability to provide members with convenience and choice through a single multi-functional card, Friedell said. It grants access to over 60,000 retail locations, including major pharmacy and grocery chains, and covers out-of-pocket healthcare expenses related to dental, vision and hearing. Furthermore, helpful connects members to The Helper Bees’ nationwide network of over 20,000 vetted home care providers.

The Helper Bees has selected Boston-based Lynx as its card provider. In addition to the flex card, the partnership offers an integrated e-commerce experience, providing a wide range of products and services on a single platform.

Lynx’s platform connects to an application programming interface (API) for health care payments, banking and e-commerce. It allows companies to integrate customizable financial technology solutions for improved affordability, increased health engagement and enhanced financial security.

“Partnering with The Helper Bees to introduce the helpful card is a testament to our commitment to modernizing the supplemental benefits space and simplifying the member experience,” Lynx CEO Matthew Renfro said in a statement. “With these benefits and services becoming increasingly important in Medicare Advantage, this collaboration ensures more seamless and efficient access.”

The card’s flexibility allows for effective fund allocation, maximizing utilization without extra costs. Members can access various options, while payers can customize choices to meet specific plan requirements and budget constraints.

helpful is accessible to all of The Helper Bees’ payer partnerships, including Medicare Advantage plans, Medicaid-managed care organizations, long-term care insurance carriers and other partners.

“The growth in these supplemental benefits has come based on the belief that non-medical services help keep members healthier and independent at home,” Friedell said. “But when they are disjointed with different vendors and different payment models, they begin to lose their value. By pulling them together into one unified experience, a plan [such as Medicare Advantage] can start to look at leveraging the dollars they’re spending on these SDoH non-medical services to affect health care and keep people healthier and independent at home longer.”

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Announced Wednesday, Medicare At Home will allow MA plans to partner with CareLinx in a Medicare-compliant fashion so they can offer home care services, shown to prevent hospital readmissions and reduce total episodic health care costs. In addition to service delivery, Medicare At Home will also help MA plans gather and make sense of data related to how their members use home care services.

The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) made the decision in April to allow for certain non-skilled, in-home care supports as supplemental benefits under the Medicare Advantage program for 2019. So far, about 270 health plans have capitalized on the newfound flexibilities for supplemental benefits next year, covering about 1.5 million MA enrollees, according to CMS.

Big MA players such as Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) and home care providers alike touted the move as a major victory in the battle to address social determinants of health and keep older adults in their homes for as long as possible. Actually being able to take advantage of CMS’ MA changes has been difficult, however, largely because of the fragmented nature of the home care industry and the relatively small window plans had to finalize their 2019 benefits packages.

Medicare At Home from CareLinx will make the process easier for MA plans, CareLinx CEO Sherwin Sheik told Home Health Care News.

“Everyone sees a lot of promise, and MA plans want to start incorporating non-skilled home care,” Sheik said. “But when it comes down to how they effectively do that at scale, there have been a lot of questions asked. We heard those questions loud and clear.”

San Francisco-based CareLinx — purchased in September 2017 by Generali Global Assistance, part of the Generali Group — has the scale to launch an MA-focused product that could appeal to plans. Founded in 2011, CareLinx connects older adults and families looking for home care services to its pool of more than 300,000 vetted, licensed and tech-enabled caregivers.

“That’s put us in a pretty unique position to be a preferred partner as health plans are looking to incorporate non-skilled into their benefits designs,” Sheik said. “Under one [service level agreement], plans are able to basically roll this out in a Medicare compliant way. When you’re a large or mid-sized plan in multiple geographies, just contracting at the ZIP-code level, the franchise level, is daunting.”

The 2021 ‘explosion’

CareLinx has already been working with select MA plans on the home care front with “best-in-class” success, Sheik said. Medicare At Home draws upon the lessons learned from those relationships.

In general, he said, CareLinx’s model is able to coordinate home care benefits at a roughly 25% discount price compared to traditional agency models.

As part of the new Medicare At Home offering, CareLinx updated its technology and built a specific home-visit checklist catered to MA plans. It also tweaked the type of data it’s capturing when caregivers enter client homes.

“On the technology side, when we’re capturing all this data on members in the home, it’s getting rolled up very efficiently into a population dashboard specifically designed for Medicare Advantage care management programs,” Sheik said. “The Medicare At Home product line is a combination of a new technology offering, plus all our processes and implementation knowhow per the Medicare rules and guidelines.”

Despite interest and demand, it’s unclear how many MA plans will actually offer in-home support services such as personal care and housekeeping in 2019. Just 3% of MA plans will offer in-home supports as supplemental benefits, one AARP analysis found. A separate analysis from Washington, D.C.-based consultancy firm Avalere found that 40% will.

Plans that went live with non-skilled home care supports for 2019 likely did so in controlled approaches to gain insights and design better programs for 2020, Sheik said. The “explosion” of opportunity for the home care industry will likely come closer to 2021, he said.

“This change of Medicare allowing for non-skilled home care — which is really addressing the social determinants of health such as meals, mobility, social isolations — makes for a really exciting time in our industry,” he said. “You now have the government seeing Medicare, seeing the value of actually investing in and deploying social types of services, rather than clinical types of services, to reduce readmission rates and total episodic cost of care.”

Written by Robert Holly

The post CareLinx Launches ‘Turnkey’ Home Care Option for Medicare Advantage Plans appeared first on Home Health Care News.

Addus President and CEO Dirk Allison discussed his company’s latest acquisition, its MA plans and third-quarter financial results during a Tuesday conference call with investors. The Frisco, Texas-based company announced both its acquisition agreement with VIP Health Care Services and third-quarter financials on Monday.

“Our strong operating performance continued into the third quarter of 2018, leading to our solid financial results,” Allison said. “We are very excited that the team at VIP will be joining the Addus family.”

Addus is primarily a home care services company, but it has started to expand into the hospice space as well, a point epitomized by its $40 million acquisition of Ambercare that closed at the beginning of May. Addus and its more than 33,000 employees currently provide home-based care services to tens of thousands of consumers across two dozen states, with particularly strong market presence in Illinois and New Mexico.

Overall, net service revenues for Addus were $137.6 million in the third quarter of 2018, a more than 26% increase over the same quarter last year.

Personal care services account for more than 90% of Addus’ revenue mix.

Addus CEO details future, ongoing acquisition plans

Following the end of the third quarter, Addus announced it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire the assets of VIP Health Care Services, a home care provider that serves about 1,250 consumers across all five New York City boroughs, Long Island and two additional counties.

VIP Health Care Services is based in Richmond Hill, New York.

“This acquisition is an important step to further our strategy of developing strong operations in our states,” Allison said. “Together with our South Shore operation on Long Island, VIP will give us the coverage we need to offer full-market services to our [managed care organization] partners.”

VIP Health Care Services, which has annualized revenues of about $50 million, is a “great strategic fit” for Addus that will help the company remain competitive in a consolidating New York market, Allison said. Upon completion of the deal, Addus and VIP Health Care Services will have combined revenues of more than $110 million in New York.

Addus has not yet disclosed the purchase price for VIP Health Care Services. As far as a multiple, Addus “paid around 7 times [EBITDA], maybe slightly lower,” Allison said.

The acquisition is expected to close in the first or second quarter of 2019, Allison said, adding that Addus’ other recent acquisitions of Ambercare and Arcadia remain on track. Addus has closed Arcadia’s former corporate office, a move that should lead to fully realized savings during the first quarter of 2019.

Addus had cash of $147.5 million and bank debt of $103.2 million at the end of the third quarter of 2018, while availability under its revolving credit facility was $88.6 million. Net cash provided by operating activities was $4.5 million for the third quarter of 2018.

In addition to its acquisition plans, Addus also announced Monday that is had completed a new senior secured credit facility for $269.6 million, including a $250 million revolver and a $19.6 million delayed draw term loan. Capital One served as the agent, joint lead arranger and sole bookrunner for the new facility, which replaces Addus’ previous one.

The new facility doubles the size of Addus’ available revolving credit line and will be used for organic growth and acquisitions.

With ample cash on its balance sheet and a full pipeline of M&A opportunities in the personal care and hospice segments, Addus is likely to “aggressively deploy capital” over the next six months, according to a research note from investment firm Jefferies.

“Given deal valuations in the 6 to 7 times EBITDA range, as well as management’s proven track record in sourcing high quality assets, upcoming M&A announcements should act as positive catalysts for earnings upside and stock momentum throughout 2019,” the Jefferies note stated.

Addus forming MA relationships in 2019, sees upside in 2020

In April, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) opted to make non-skilled in-home care services allowable as supplemental benefits in MA plans starting in 2019. The CMS decision opens the Medicare Advantage door to home care agencies like never before, but the size and immediacy of the opportunity has been debated.

Only 3% of MA plans will offer in-home support services such as personal care and housekeeping in 2019, according to a recent AARP analysis

Addus sees 2020 as a more realistic timeframe for when MA plans start to expand their supplemental benefits, Allison said.

In the meantime, Addus will begin building and testing out those relationships, he said. In fact, Addus is in ongoing negotiations with at least two large Medicare Advantage plans to provide personal care services to members starting Jan. 1, 2019.

“We are excited about the possibility of working with these partners to gather the appropriate data, which will allow Addus to help Medicare Advantage providers as they continue to expand their offerings around personal care,” Allison said. “While it is too early to tell what the potential impact could be for Addus, this is another positive step toward expanding the availability of our home care services under a value-based payment system and an indication of increasing awareness by the federal government of the value of personal care services in improving the quality and lowering the cost of health care.”

Emergency room visit and re-hospitalization rates will be two key metrics during those data collection efforts.

Additionally, Addus announced Monday that Jean Rush has been named to its board of directors, a leadership change that will also help Addus succeed in the MA environment.

Rush previously served as executive vice president of government markets for Highmark Inc., one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies. In that role, Rush oversaw Medicare Advantage, Medicaid and other related business lines. Prior to Highmark, Rush served in various executive roles with Centene Corporation in operations focused on Medicare, Medicaid and dual-eligible populations.

More on Addus’ Q3 results

For the third quarter of 2018, Addus’ personal care net service revenues climbed about 18% over the third quarter of 2017, growth attributable to increases in billable hours per business day and in revenue per billable hour.

Personal care, hospice and home health revenues checked in at about $128.1 million, $7.1 million and $2.4 million for the quarter, respectively. Addus did not record any hospice or home health revenues in 2017.

Average daily census for Addus’ emerging hospice stands stands at about 520, with average length of stay at about 145 days.

Jefferies analysts are bullish on Addus moving forward, given the increasing demand for personal care services and the company’s position to capture further market share from smaller competitors.

Addus’ stock was up 8.04% midday Tuesday, trading at $70.15.

Written by Robert Holly

The post Addus Makes Medicare Advantage Headway, to Acquire VIP Health Care Services appeared first on Home Health Care News.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) touted the growth and evolution of the MA program in an announcement issued last Friday.

In addition to touting Medicare Advantage’s overall success, CMS also pointed out key MA pricing trends, mainly noting that plan premiums, on average, are projected to drop in 2019.

“The steps that the Trump administration has taken to improve and drive competition in Medicare Advantage means more savings, more benefits, and lower costs for seniors,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in a statement. “The popularity of programs, such as Medicare Advantage, and with the various new supplemental benefits and policy changes that have been adopted, we expect plan choices to be even more robust moving forward.”

Overall, MA premium averages have steadily declined since 2015 from the actual average premium of $32.91. For 2019, the Medicare Advantage average monthly premium will decline by $1.81 to $28.00 from 2018, CMS estimates.

Roughly 83% of Medicare Advantage enrollees will have the same or lower premium in 2019 if they continue in the same plan, according to CMS.

While premiums are on their way down, MA enrollment is projected to reach a new all-time high, with more than 36% of Medicare beneficiaries expected to be enrolled next year. That’s about 22.6 million Medicare beneficiaries in total — and about 2.4 million more beneficiaries than in 2018.

Nationally, the number of MA plan choices will increase from about 3,100 in 2018 to about 3,700 in 2019.

Additionally, because of new flexibilities available for the first time in 2019, nearly 270 Medicare Advantage plans will be providing an estimated 1.5 million enrollees new types of supplemental benefits, including, for example, adult day care services and in-home caregiver support services.

“Medicare Part D and Medicare Advantage demonstrate the successes possible when we harness consumer choice and private-sector innovation to improve care and lower cost,” U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement. “Efforts to strengthen negotiation and competition in Medicare Part D are bearing fruit in the form of lower drug costs for American seniors, a key priority for President Trump. Meanwhile, the significant steps taken to maximize competition among Medicare Advantage plans and support and empower Medicare beneficiaries are a crucial piece of allowing patients to define and drive value, which the Trump administration has made a priority.”

Home care providers having been paying close attention to how insurers capitalize on CMS’ decision to allow certain non-skilled in-home care supports under the MA program ever since the agency announced the move in April. Some insurers, including Indianapolis-based Anthem, Inc. (NYSE: ANTM), have started to roll out new benefits packages that make use of those new opportunities.

Amedisys (Nasdaq: AMED) CEO Paul Kusserow recently highlighted his company’s interest in forming MA partnerships during the 2018 Home Health Care News Summit in Chicago.

Access to other supplemental benefits, such as dental, vision, and hearing, continues to grow as well, according to CMS.

Similar growth in terms of enrollment and available plans is also expected in 2020.

Written by Robert Holly

The post As Insurers Unveil Expanded MA Offerings, CMS Touts Program’s Success appeared first on Home Health Care News.